


How Long Until You Fall Apart Again?

by Soquilii9



Category: Leverage
Genre: Drunken Shenanigans, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-18
Updated: 2018-03-18
Packaged: 2019-04-04 01:04:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,229
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14008806
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Soquilii9/pseuds/Soquilii9
Summary: Flashback to a time Eliot Spencer ran into Nate Ford and the night didn't go as planned...





	How Long Until You Fall Apart Again?

 

 

Clinking glass and muted conversation greeted Eliot Spencer as he walked into the high-end hotel, blending nicely with the other patrons in a three-piece suit.  Just off a job, his offshore accounts now enriched by half a mil in exchange for a certain lost relic, he owed himself a drink to celebrate.  He slid onto a high backed barstool and waited for the man to take his order.  A long pier glass mirror reflected patrons to his left and right; he gave them a fleeting glance before he ordered a whiskey straight.  One rather rumpled, dark-haired man about four empty seats to his right supported his chin on his hand; he seemed almost asleep.

Eliot relaxed, sipping his drink, thinking.  Maybe he wouldn’t work for a while.  His bank balance was such that he could have a fine time just on the interest.  He was musing on what he might like to do next when the dark-haired man in the mirror looked up, blearily staring at him.

‘Son of a …..’ Eliot muttered.  _Of all the people to run into … !_

It was Ford.

At least, he _thought_ it was Ford.  He hadn't seen him since that _theftus interruptus_ incident in Tangiers some years back.  Ford, pistol drawn, had come within a hair of nabbing Eliot, who was struggling with a sizeable meteor from the natural sciences section of the museum.  Eliot gave some thought to tossing the chunk of iron down, but the half-million Euros offered in his client's agreement was incentive to carry on.  He headed down a dark corridor where he knew from studying the building's blueprints existed an old, unused dumbwaiter.  Holding the spiky chunk painfully under one arm, he slid the door open and hurriedly pulled the platform level.  He hopped aboard, trusting the rope to hold his 185 pounds plus 50 pounds of iron.  He closed the door.  Swiftly operating the pulley he was two floors up, hanging silently, when Ford passed the dumbwaiter door.

Despite this near miss, Ford had been on his game back then, sharp, neat, tailored - and sober.  Was this really Nathan Ford?  Eliot consulted the mirror again, surreptitiously.

The apparition slumped against the bar was anything but tailored and sober.  The longish, wavy, touseled hair hung in bloodshot eyes; the loosened tie lay askew against a rumpled shirt and the cuffs of his sleeves, stained with spilled liquor, flapped unlinked.

Yes, it was Ford. 

Nathan Ford, insurance investigator for I.Y.S Insurance Agency, one of Eliot’s more tenacious adversaries; a man tracked insurance fraud and who simply would not give up.  Eliot had been ducking and dodging him for many years and so far, had managed to elude him.  Now here he was, big as life, sitting four stools down.  It was like ditching a bad date over and over again, only to have her show up at your mother's.

They stared at each other in the mirror, as if the other weren’t physically in the room but somehow on the other side of that thick, silvered glass like the proverbial Alice.  Nate had always been a drinker, but this time he was liquored up past all recognition.  Might be best to just sit still and not call attention to himself.  Maybe Nate would think he was just an apparition in the mirror and not call the cops, which weren’t high on his list of needs at the moment.

Eliot watched Nate slowly straighten up, slide clumsily off his barstool, drink in hand, never taking his eyes off the reflection of Eliot in the mirror.  At no time did he look directly at Eliot.  The drink was tipping in his unsteady hand, spilling several drops on his wrist.  Nate paused to lick them off.  With a comical, courtly air, he sipped the whiskey level down so that he could walk without spilling its precious contents and made his way past the four empty seats.  He leaned heavily against the bar, still watching Eliot in the mirror.

‘Spenzzzer,’ he slurred.

Nate reeked of liquor.  Despite this, Eliot ignored the man and looked down into the depths of his drink.  He lifted the glass to his lips, staring straight ahead.  _What could have happened to Nate that he should stoop to this?_  

‘Spenzzzer, you … you are … you’re gonna hafta come ‘ith me.  Now.’

The alert bartender came over.  ‘Is something wrong?’

Nate tapped his glass on the bar, splashing what little was left in it.  ‘Need a refill.’

‘I think you’ve had enough.’

‘I’ll decide that, and in the mea’time, thisss man is comin’ ‘ith me.  He is unner arrest.’

‘Are you a cop?’ asked the bartender, skeptically.

‘Show him your badge, Nate,’ Eliot jeered.

 _‘Is_ he a cop?’ the bartender asked Eliot.

‘Thinks he is,’ said Eliot, eyes wide with innocence.  ‘I run into him in every bar in town.  He keeps mistakin’ me for this guy …’

The busy bartender stepped away to wait on a customer, luckily missing the next exchange, for he would probably have called the cops.

‘You are that guy, Spenzzcer, you are that guy, and you fell … right inna my trap.’

 _‘What_ trap?’

‘Ne’r mind, I’m bringin’ you up on charges for that stolen Monet …’  Nate fumbled in his pockets.  ‘Now, where’d I put those han’cuffs …’

‘You don’t carry handcuffs.  Last I heard you had a Saturday night special but you ain’t gonna pull that in here.’

Nate brandished the empty glass in front of Eliot’s nose, looking him in the eye for the first time.  ‘Are you comin’ ‘ith me?’

The bartender came back to check on potentially troublesome patrons.  Eliot hammed it up for his benefit.

‘You _want_ me to come with you?’ he asked Nate, suggestively.

‘Look,’ said the bartender, losing his patience, ‘I don’t know what you two got going but you either get out of here or I’m callin’ security.’

‘I have a room.  I’m stayin’ here,’ drawled Nate.

‘OK then, take him to his room,’ the bartender advised Eliot.  ‘I’m cutting him off anyway.  Go on, take your friend to his room.  What you do after that don’t concern me.’

Eliot rolled his eyes.  Nate was completely limp, so drunk he could barely walk.  Eliot hooked one of Nate’s arms around his neck and half dragged him out of the bar.  When they reached the elevator he paused to ask his companion, ‘What room, Nate?’

But for the support of Eliot’s broad shoulder, Nate would have slid to the floor.  Eliot twisted and riffled through Nate’s pockets with his free hand, growling in irritation.  He gingerly dipped into both pants pockets and eventually came up with a card key.  Tenth floor.

‘ _All right_ ,’ Eliot growled again.  After hauling Nate into the elevator he punched the button so hard the plastic cover cracked.

Nate slid to the floor.  Eliot let him.

When the elevator door opened, Eliot stooped and gathered his nemesis over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry.  Reading the card key in his hand, he consulted the room number plaque on the wall.

‘Ten-sixteen,’ he muttered between expletives, ‘ten-sixteen.’  Furiously striding down the hall despite his burden, he finally found the room and refrained from kicking the door in; using the card key instead.  He swiped it fast and hard.  Once inside, he unceremoniously dumped Nate onto the king-sized bed.

Nate came to just then and grasped Eliot’s wrist, more swiftly that Eliot would have thought possible in his present condition.  ‘I’m takin’ you in, Spenzzcer.  You’re … gonna … you gotta pay for what you stole.’

Eliot easily extricated himself from Nate’s grasp.  ‘By the time you sober up I’ll be long gone.’

‘Dammit, you’re not gonna make me lose my job!  Not on top o’ everything else!’ Nate yelled furiously.  His face was too florid and his reddened eyes bulged.

Eliot didn’t get a chance to figure out what Nate was talking about because at that moment Nate threw up, all over himself, Eliot’s three-piece suit and the bedspread.

‘Aw, Jeez!’ said Eliot, rolling his eyes.  In disgust, he flung moisture and particulates off his hands and shucked off his stained jacket and vest.  The shirt followed.  Luckily, the pants were dry.  He laid them over a chair and stood clad only in his underwear.

Eliot shook his head and looked down at Nate, mumbling incoherently on the bed in a pool of his own vomit.

_This wasn't his problem.  All he had to do was walk out._

He didn’t.

He sighed, picked up the phone by the bed and called for housekeeping.  With distaste, he stripped Nate, walked him into the shower and sat him on the tiled ledge.  The warm water splashed Eliot as he tried to hold Nate’s head up and rip open a bar of soap at the same time.

A knock on the door sounded.  ‘Housekeeping!’ the maid called.

Eliot yelled above the noise of the shower.  ‘Yeah, hey, make the bed, willya?  All the way down to the mattress!  Had a little accident.  Leave a couple of extra towels!  Let me know when you’re done … and hurry up!’

‘Si, senor!  Oh, I see where somebody get sick.  I clean it all up for you, senor!’

Eliot could hear her muttering in Spanish as she worked.  He held Nate under the shower, wondering why in hell he was here instead of on a boat to Cancun or somewhere.  Eliot’s shoulder length hair had broken free of its tie and brushed against Nate, who seemed to think some woman named Maggie was holding him.  He kept pawing at Eliot, caressing him all over, mumbling tender words.  Eliot struggled, dodging the soapy hands of his nemesis, hissing at him through bared teeth to shut the hell up.

‘Stop it, man!  Just sit still!  Jeez!!  You got crap all over you.  I’m _not Maggie_!!!  Dammit to hell, _cut it out_ , Nate!’

‘Mags … c’mon … Maggie, y’know, y’know, I’m _not_ ’n love with that woman … she’s a _thief_ … I _chase_ thieves, _you_ know that … been tryin’ to catch ‘er for years … she ain’t _you_ , Maggie …’

‘Are jou all right in there, senor?’ called the maid.  ‘Is jou and jour, uh, girlfriend hokay?’

Eliot closed his eyes and shook his head, patience swiftly waning; anger mounting exponentially.  _Why **in hell** am I here?  Why **in hell** am I doing this?  What's this man ever done for me that I should be washing puke out of his hair at two in the morning?!?_

‘Uh … yeah, we’re fine,' he called to the maid.  ' _Fine._   You done?’

‘Si, senor.  I hurry like you tell me to.’

‘Thanks.  Listen, I’ll leave you a big tip.  Do me a favor and put a _Do Not Disturb_ sign on the door, willya?’

‘Si, senor.  _Buenas noches_.  I hope jou and jour girlfriend are hokay.’

The door clicked closed and automatically locked.

Eliot breathed a sigh of relief.  He hauled Nate out of the shower, none too gently, and wrapped him in two of the big hotel towels.  Nate was quiet now; the warm shower seemed to have quelled his amorous demands and he was actually snoring on his feet.

Eliot guided Nate to the freshly made bed … which he noticed had been lovingly turned down by the maid, a mint in the center of each pillow … and helped him into bed.  Nate was out like a light.  Resonant snores permeated the room.  Eliot flung the covers over the towel-wrapped man.

Satisfied that Nate was down for the night, Eliot took his stained suit and scrubbed it in the sink.  He wasn’t staying any longer than it would take to rinse it out, blot it with towels and put it back on.  It was ruined, of course, but it would do to get him out of the hotel, into a cab and back to his own digs.

Eliot wondered, as he checked the room, left a generous tip for the obliging maid, laid the keycard on the table and slipped out, closing the door behind him, if Nate would remember this night.

 _He_ certainly wouldn’t forget it.

~~~

Some years later, a man named Victor Dubenich hired him for a job that threw him back together with Nate Ford.  This time, instead of a game pf cat-and-mouse, he was actually working with the man.  Surprisingly, the job ended well for everyone involved except Dubenich.  One show only, no encores.  Eliot was ready to walk away once more, when a thought occurred to him.

He ran to catch up to Nate who was on the way to his car.  Hardison and the blonde chick were following Nate, jabbering at him.

‘You know, I never had that cool a time on a job,’ said Hardison, following so close behind Nate he was stepping on his heels.

‘It’s a walk-away,’ Nate reminded him.

‘And I got focus issues, brother, you kept me right on …’

Striding beside Nate, Parker piped up in a run-on sentence.  ‘I’m really good at one thing, only one thing, that’s it, but you, you know other things and … and I can’t stop doing my one thing, can’t retire …’

Eliot slid in on Nate’s other side, breaking into Parker’s seemingly mindless ramblings.

‘You want to know what _I_ think?’

‘Not really,’ said Nate.

_‘How long until you fall apart again?’_

Nate gave him a withering look.

 _He remembered, all right_.

‘Oh, I’m touched,’ said Nate.

 

THE END


End file.
